Cannon Advances to Second Round in Vegas

DON SCHUMACHER RACING
NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series
Round 4 of 23
SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals
The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Sunday, April 6, 2003


CANNON ADVANCES TO SECOND ROUND

LAS VEGAS (April 6, 2003) -- "It felt like I got a monkey off my back," said
Scotty Cannon after winning the first round of eliminations of the
SummmitRacing.com NHRA Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
It was his first round win of the season in his Oakley Funny Car, and he was
elated.

"You'd have thought we'd won the finals," he laughed.

The first round against Dean Skuza, wasn't pretty, as the Oakley car dropped
a cylinder at 300 feet, spun the tires and the motor and kicked out a few
rods. But the resulting 4.976-second pass at 252.99 mph was enough to defeat
Skuza's 6.695/130.89.

The second round saw him paired against his teammate Whit Bazemore for the
second time this year, which also produced a somewhat ugly race. Cannon
barely made it off the line before the "Sleep Tight...Oakley Design is
Awake" decaled Funny Car smoked the tires. Cannon coasted partway up the
track and stalled. In the other lane, Bazemore also smoked the tires at half
track, then lost a supercharger at the top end after posting a 5.230/250.78
pass for the win.

"The good thing is one of the Schumacher cars advanced to the semifinal;
hopefully Baze will win it," said Cannon. "He wanted to probably run better.
We were both trying to run real good, I'm pretty sure. In the first round
the car went out there and dropped a hole just past 300 feet, spun a little
bit and just blew up and kicked a few rods out of it. So, we came back and
put a new motor in it. We did a little bit of adjustment on the clutch,
allowing for the track conditions.

"It just didn't hold it, it didn't stick. It went out about 20 feet and
started to smoke the tires. You're under a lot of pressure right there. When
it happens in qualifying I usually catch it -- let off of it a little sooner
than that so it won't over-rev and blow up -- but when you're under race
conditions if something happens at that point and it smokes the tires
there's nothing you can do to pedal it or save it to win anyway, not that
early; unless the other guy happens to do the same thing.

"You're actually concentrating on cutting a light and trying to keep it in
the groove for the first 100 feet because it's real critical with these
Funny Cars to keep them in the groove for the first 100 feet so that when
you get to around 200-300 feet, when the clutch really applies itself, the
car won't want to get out of the groove and spin the tires and then maybe
blow up.

Cannon, his crew chief Phil Shuler and the rest of the team are encouraged
but cautiously optimistic by the win. "We only have five or six or seven
runs counting Gainesville. It's the only data that we have to even look back
on. I'm not making excuses. The way I look at it we're three races and about
four test sessions behind because of our own fault. We're going to have to
make some headway. We thought about testing tomorrow, but we broke two
blowers and in Houston the conditions are totally different from here. You
have to run a different motor combination. I don't think testing would be
wise here tomorrow unless we were having trouble, like going down the track
or not having qualified. I'm not a big fan of testing when you have
back-to-back races, because if you go out tomorrow and blow a body up or
have some engine failure or just have a real bad day, you've got to be in
Houston by Wednesday and Wednesday's close."

Cannon is also looking to give his crew a bit of rest after a tough three
months of struggling to get a handle on the car. "We'll get all our stuff
together and give our boys a break. It's been three months that we've been
beating them half to death. I think Don (Schumacher, team owner) should be
seeing a breath of fresh air now. He's got three good running cars now, plus
the (U.S. Army) dragster runs good. We'll keep working hard and see what
happens."

Cannon now stands 13th in the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series Funny Car
point standings.

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